The methods provided by this package are designed to be used in conjunction with ExtUtils::MakeMaker.
When MakeMaker writes a Makefile,
it creates one or more objects that inherit their methods from a package MM.
MM itself doesn't provide any methods,
but it ISA ExtUtils::MM_Unix class.
The inheritance tree of MM lets operating specific packages take the responsibility for all the methods provided by MM_Unix.
We are trying to reduce the number of the necessary overrides by defining rather primitive operations within ExtUtils::MM_Unix.

If you are going to write a platform specific MM package,
please try to limit the necessary overrides to primitive methods,
and if it is not possible to do so,
let's work out how to achieve that gain.

If you are overriding any of these methods in your Makefile.PL (in the MY class),
please report that to the makemaker mailing list.
We are trying to minimize the necessary method overrides and switch to data driven Makefile.PLs wherever possible.
In the long run less methods will be overridable via the MY class.

The following description of methods is still under development.
Please refer to the code for not suitably documented sections and complain loudly to the makemaker@perl.org mailing list.
Better yet,
provide a patch.

Not all of the methods below are overridable in a Makefile.PL.
Overridable methods are marked as (o).
All methods are overridable by a platform specific MM_*.pm file.

Cross-platform methods are being moved into MM_Any.
If you can't find something that used to be in here,
look in MM_Any.

Does very much the same as the cflags script in the perl distribution.
It doesn't return the whole compiler command line,
but initializes all of its parts.
The const_cccmd method then actually returns the definition of the CCCMD macro which uses these parts.

macro description default
TAR tar command to use tar
TARFLAGS flags to pass to TAR cvf
ZIP zip command to use zip
ZIPFLAGS flags to pass to ZIP -r
COMPRESS compression command to gzip --best
use for tarfiles
SUFFIX suffix to put on .gz
compressed files
SHAR shar command to use shar
PREOP extra commands to run before
making the archive
POSTOP extra commands to run after
making the archive
TO_UNIX a command to convert linefeeds
to Unix style in your archive
CI command to checkin your ci -u
sources to version control
RCS_LABEL command to label your sources rcs -Nv$(VERSION_SYM): -q
just after CI is run
DIST_CP $how argument to manicopy() best
when the distdir is created
DIST_DEFAULT default target to use to tardist
create a distribution
DISTVNAME name of the resulting archive $(DISTNAME)-$(VERSION)
(minus suffixes)

Called by init_main. Sets up ABSPERL, PERL, FULLPERL and all the *PERLRUN* permutations.

PERL is allowed to be miniperl
FULLPERL must be a complete perl
ABSPERL is PERL converted to an absolute path
*PERLRUN contains everything necessary to run perl, find it's
libraries, etc...
*PERLRUNINST is *PERLRUN + everything necessary to find the
modules being built.

Called by staticmake. Defines how to write the Makefile to produce a static new perl.

By default the Makefile produced includes all the static extensions in the perl library. (Purified versions of library files, e.g., DynaLoader_pure_p1_c0_032.a are automatically ignored to avoid link errors.)

Parse a $file and return what $VERSION is set to by the first assignment. It will return the string "undef" if it can't figure out what $VERSION is. $VERSION should be for all to see, so our $VERSION or plain $VERSION are okay, but my $VERSION is not.

<package Foo VERSION> is also checked for. The first version declaration found is used, but this may change as it differs from how Perl does it.

parse_version() will try to use version before checking for $VERSION so the following will work.

Using either $MM->{uc $var} || $Config{lc $var}, it will attempt to replace it's $prefix with a $new_prefix.

Should the $prefix fail to match AND a PREFIX was given as an argument to WriteMakefile() it will set it to the $new_prefix + $default. This is for systems whose file layouts don't neatly fit into our ideas of prefixes.

This is for heuristics which attempt to create directory structures that mirror those of the installed perl.

For example:

$MM->prefixify('installman1dir', '/usr', '/home/foo', 'man/man1');

this will attempt to remove '/usr' from the front of the $MM->{INSTALLMAN1DIR} path (initializing it to $Config{installman1dir} if necessary) and replace it with '/home/foo'. If this fails it will simply use '/home/foo/man/man1'.